Get in Shape, Girl!

My friend’s husband recently wrote a blog about his health and fitness goals for the upcoming year which made me realize I had yet to write about my own as previously promised.  Now there’s a bonus incentive, however, because if I link to his post in this post, I might get a free book.  Yay.

Anyone my age or a little older perhaps may remember the following:

Oh my word, did I LOVE anything and everything “Get in Shape Girl!” as a child!  I had the leg warmers, the arm bands, and the weird hula hoop with a bar across the middle … I’m still not sure exactly what I was supposed to do with it.  All that to say that even as a child, I was excited about physical fitness.  Granted, I may not have always loved PE or sports (that came a little later), but at thee years old I was in dance classes and kept it up through my senior year of high school.  I played sports in middle school as an alternative to PE and happened to fall in love with volleyball which I played through my senior year as well.

And then came college.  All the sudden, life was totally different.  There was no more volleyball or dance to keep me active.  There was cafeteria food and late night Taco Bueno runs.  The cumulative effect was not good.  I started gaining weight my freshman year and didn’t stop until the middle of my senior year when I finally got serious about becoming active again.  I started doing step aerobics while home over Christmas break, and continued with a class at OBU that spring semester.  I started using the elliptical while I read magazines.  I built up my endurance in fun ways so that when I started running with some friends the following year, I didn’t have to start at ground zero.  Running has since become my favorite form of work out, which is odd in that I used to despise it.

But working out is only half of it.  There’s the food side as well.  I was a VERY picky eater as a child.  I went through a phase where the only thing I would eat was Chef Boyardee Beefaroni.  Go ahead, make the gagging noises with me now.    I hated most vegetables, too.  Thankfully, my parents didn’t keep much junk food in the house or I would have been an obese child, I’m sure of it!  Like I said, I was a pretty active kid and I would say around average in terms of weight.  I don’t ever remember thinking much about my weight until middle school.  I hit puberty early and looked older and more developed than most of my skinny-minnie prepubescent friends.  In 8th grade I started to think I was fat (which I absolutely was not), a self concept which wasn’t helped by a particular thoughtless comment about my weight made by a classmate.  Talk about the power of words.  I started counting calories and working out as much as I could, and honestly, if not for a fortuitous suggestion from my mother, I undoubtedly would have followed down the road so many other young girls have taken and turned to anorexia or bulimia.

Just before the end of my 8th grade year, my mom suggested we do a weight loss Bible study together.  The thought of dieting was not appealing to me because I just knew I would have to eat things I hated.  (My childhood pickiness hadn’t evolved that much.)  However, the premise of this diet/Bible study was that one could eat whatever he/she wanted as long as it was only done within the bounds of hunger and fullness.  And while I have since come to have serious qualms with this particular Bible study’s use of Scripture and oversimplification of nutrition, it could not have come at a more opportune time in my life.  I soon realized what a hold food had on me, idolatrously so at times.  I learned to eat smaller portions and stopped eating out of boredom, and as a result I lost about twenty pounds.  I started my freshman year of high school feeling good about myself and my appearance.  Volleyball helped me keep my weight within about a ten pound range, and even though I sometimes felt “fat” in comparison to other girls my age, I look back at pictures of myself in high school and think, “What the heck was I thinking?!  If only I could look like that now!”

So if college was bad for physical activity, it was worse for eating unhealthily.  I developed some really bad habits in terms of food choices and portion size.  I remembered everything I had learned in that BIble study but was unable and often unwilling to submit to its principles.  Food became more of a spiritual struggle for me than it had ever been.  As I gained more and more weight, I would look at myself in the mirror and not even recognize the person looking back at me.  I would see pictures of myself and not believe it was me.  I was a skinny person inside a fat person’s body, so for a good portion of my college days I never felt like myself.

Starting to work out again my senior year helped, at least in not gaining more weight.  I tried to only eat when I was hungry and then to make healthier choices, but it was extremely difficult.  My roommate and I did the South Beach diet for two weeks, and it was perhaps the longest two weeks of my life.    I have learned over the years that I am NOT a dieter.  If I don’t like something, I am not going to force myself to eat it.  I cannot deprive myself of my favorite things indefinitely.  After college I lost weight on and off through exercise, but nursed bad eating habits on and off as well.

A couple years later I saw a friend of mine who I hadn’t seen in several months, and she looked amazing.  She hadn’t been overweight before, but she had lost a little weight and basically just looked fit.  This was right at the peak of my dissatisfaction with myself in terms of weight loss.  I had come to learn that I could somewhat control my weight through exercise, but the poor nutrition choices I had been sowing into my life for years would someday catch up with me no matter how hard I worked out.  I wanted to be healthy, not just skinny.  For myself and my future family, I wanted to develop lifelong healthy eating habits.  After talking to my friend, I was excited to start her particular program because it focused on life change and not just weight loss.  I started eating small portions several times throughout the day focusing on lean protein and complex carbs.  I tried foods I thought I didn’t like and learned to love them.  I reintroduced weights into my workouts (which I hadn’t done since high school) and did varying intensity cardio training.  Maybe my favorite thing about the program was my free day.  One day a week I didn’t have to work out and could eat whatever I wanted.  I lost weight, had more energy, and felt so much better about myself because I was making long term strides toward health and fitness.  I felt like this was something I could keep up indefinitely because it didn’t feel as much like a program as it did a lifestyle.

That was about two and a half years ago, and I am still a strong believer in this way of eating and working out.  However, there’s the knowing and then there’s the doing.  I know that I am equipped to make the right decisions, but there’s still that mental (and for me, spiritual) battle to be fought.  This past semester I started back to school, and it was all to easy to fall back into my old college habits.  I kept up with running some, but by October the demands of school and work gobbled up any time I had for working out.  Grabbing food on the go was convenient, and I soon abandoned all efforts at making healthy food selections opting instead for what was easy.  And of course, the inevitable happened.  I gained weight.

So I am once again at the place I was when I encountered my skinny friend, with a desire for health and fitness even amidst the stresses of graduate school.  It’s been three weeks in, and I had forgotten how much I actually like living this way.  I say living because that’s what it has to be … lifestyle change.  So here’s to Resolution #1: to make significant strides toward long term health and fitness … to “Get in Shape, Girl!”

2008: Another Illustrated Year in Review

Last year I started a new tradition.  Rather than sending out a Christmas card letter, I wrote a Christmas card letter blog … 2007: An Illustrated Year in Review.  It was a great way to reflect on the past year (good times and bad) and share my experiences with others, not to mention giving myself something to look back on and remember 2007.  So as 2008 has come and gone, I am attempting to answer Jonathan Larson’s melodic question, “How do you measure, measure a year?”

IN JOBS

2008 was my last year in residence life after three years as an RA and four as a Hall Director.  After deciding (finally) to go back to school in the fall, I closed down West Hall for the last time in May.  I have so many great memories from my years at UCO, and it was certainly hard to leave.  I especially miss all my RAs (my favorite part of the job was leading the staff) and fellow HDs.  Soon after moving to Wheaton, I began working at Bath & Bodyworks and then in the fall picked up a job watching a couple boys after school three days a week.  About midway through the semester I also started tutoring a girl for the ACT.  I didn’t necessarily plan to work that much, and it was definitely a hard balancing act with the demands of graduate school.  I hope to cut back or at least balance a little better this spring.

IN MILES

Hmm, I guess this applies in more ways than one!  If I hadn’t completely uprooted and driven over a thousand miles across the country to begin school this fall, I would certainly count running a marathon as the year’s highlight.  Back last fall my good friend Jamie volunteered to train and one my first marathon with me in April.  We logged many a mile over our five months of training, becoming quite1450 familiar with almost every street in Edmond and on a few long runs, Oklahoma City as well.  We had a good race and met my initial goal of breaking five hours with a time of 4:43:34.  I was a little disappointed that I didn’t beat Oprah, but there’s always next time … the Chicago marathon is calling my name!

IN GOODBYES

After graduating from OBU in 2004, I immediately moved to Edmond to start my job at UCO.  For four fun years I lived there, and deciding to move away brought a lot of sad goodbyes.  I had the best friends!  A few weeks before I left, my friend Melissa arranged a “slumber party card night” for a few of us that usually got together on Sunday nights.  When I got to her house, it turned out that it was actually a surprise Chicago themed going away party!  Sydnie (one of my very best friends who moved away at the beginning of the year) drove in from Tulsa, and a couple other friends were in from out of town as well.  We played cards (of course) and ate Old Chicago pizza while listening to Chicago (the band) and then watched Chicago (the movie).  The highlight of the night was when the doorbell rang and Candace and Melissa were nowhere to be found.  Everyone looked at me as if it was my responsibility to answer the door.  When I opened it, Candace and Melissa were standing beside a brand new bike with a bow on it!  My sweet friends had all gone in together to replace my bike that was stolen earlier in the summer.  Yeah, did I mention I have the best friends?  The young adult pastor at my church also threw a going away swim party, and I was incredibly blessed by the prayers and encouragement from my brothers and sisters I had so grown to love over the past few years (not to mention being blessed by the amazing bible software I got as a going away gift).  Several of these same friends also showed up to carry boxes and furniture down a pretty narrow stairwell come moving day.  I tried to cram in as much quality time as possible my last night there: dinner with Stacey, prayer time with Conversation Cafe friends, a Wal-Mart run with Rodney, one last game of cards with Melissa, Candace, AnaLeah, and Michelle, and then a goodbye to Todd, Jeanna and Caed (in utero).  I think I cried at each goodbye.

IN FAMILY

I love my family so much, so I’m pretty excited for any occasion that brings us together.  I can count on Thanksgiving and Christmas, but this year my cousin Ericka graduated from high school thus bringing us all together again.  I couldn’t wait to see my uncle Jay and give him the Tim Duncan jersey I got for $3 at a garage sale with Sydnie!  He wore it the next Spurs playoff game which unfortunately they lost.  This year also marked another momentous family occasion … Jayme & I getting to live in the same town!  Man, I love that girl; she’s the closest thing I have to a sister and I get to see her all the time now as we’re both at Wheaton.    My sweet, sweet parents and brother helped me get up there, and on the way we stopped in at my great aunt and uncle’s home in Iowa.  Of course we had to watch Field of Dreams.  The last time I’d visited there was about twenty years ago, so it was so interesting to see my grandfather’s home with grown up eyes.

IN CLASSES

The biggest change in my life over the past year was definitely my return to the classroom.  After tossing around the thought for several years, I finally decided on Wheaton and began their Biblical Exegesis program this fall.  This past semester I took Intermediate Greek, New Testament Theology, and Principles of Interpretation (the level of difficulty increasing respectively).  Principles was certainly baptism by fire.  I made it through my twelve page exegesis paper somewhat unscathed, however, and funfetti cupcakes have become my new celebratory indulgence.

IN VISITS

One of the best things about living in such close proximity to Chicago is people’s willingness to come and visit!  A couple weeks after I moved to Wheaton, a couple HHBC friends stopped in for a couple days on their way back to Oklahoma from Michigan.  I had such a blast with Rachel and Jenny and got my first chance to play tour guide … walking tour guide that is.  I bet we walked fifteen miles in one day.  In October my sweet friend and marathon partner Jamie came for a visit.  I gave her a jogging tour of Wheaton in addition to the soon to be trademarked “Sarah’s Walking Tour o’ Chicago.”  We entered our name into a drawing to win vouchers for discounted front row tickets to Wicked, and we won!  My aunt Kaye came up a few weeks later to bring my cousin her car, so the three of us put in the Chicago miles as well.  My last visit of the semester was from three of the card girls.  I was so happy to have AnaLeah, Michelle and Kelsey with me on their fall break.  They came to my NT Theo class Thursday night and then we spent the rest of the weekend in the city.  I won Wicked vouchers AGAIN, so Michelle got to sit front row on her birthday after having a hilarious birthday lunch at Ed Debevic’s.  We shopped the Mag Mile and did other touristy stuff having an incredible time.  Anyone else wanna come visit?  I’ve got the tour guide thing down.

IN FRIENDSHIPS

One of the hardest things about moving was leaving behind some incredible friendships.  From the card girls, to church friends, to the House Church/Coversation Cafe crowd, to coworkers, to Stacey (who defies any category), I was incredibly blessed in Oklahoma, and I knew those friendships couldn’t be replaced wherever I went.  Thankfully, there are great people in Illinois too!  I found a church I really loved relatively quickly after moving, and Susan and Marshall have been incredibly generous to host a 20-somethings small group in their home each week.  I became quick friends with Sharon, Jill and Kristi.  I also made a good friend my first week here after attending a random discussion group.  Kristine has since become my faithful concert buddy.  I’ve been nothing but impressed with my classmates and was thankful to have my co-exegesis friends Angie and Ashley each in one of my classes.  Emily’s a great roommate, and I couldn’t be more excited to have Jayme living just over a mile away.  She makes the family and the friendship category. 

IN CONCERTS

Yes, no end of year summation would be complete without a concert tribute.  I’ve already written about most of these, so we’ll just go with this year’s list:

• Derek Webb – University Baptist Church, Shawnee, OK
• Caedmon’s Call – The Door, Dallas
• Jenny Lewis – Epiphany, Chicago
• Rachel Unthank & The Winterset – Schuba’s, Chicago
• Don Chaffer – The Union, Naperville, IL
• Ray LaMontagne – Chicago Theatre, Chicago
• Andrew Peterson – Hickory Creek Community Church, Frankfort, IL
• Conor Oberst – The Vic, Chicago
• Over the Rhine – The Union, Naperville, IL
• Shawn McDonald – Willow Creek, South Barrington, IL
• Over the Rhine – Double Door, Chicago

Now that I have access to a plethora of great shows, I have reason to add a new list to this category … Shows I Wish I’d Been Able to See:

• Sam Phillips: No excuse!  I should have gone.  Looking back, I would have even taken a loss on a second ticket just to be there.
• Andrew Peterson’s Behold the Lamb of God tour: Who cares that it was nearly two hours away on a school night?  I’ve been wanting to see this Christmas show for years, and it was finally going to be within a feasible driving distance.  A plague upon the paper that kept me at home!
• Derek Webb:  Only one thing could keep me from a solo acoustic Derek Webb show, and that would be the afore-cursed paper.  Yeah, I couldn’t really justify going the day before it was due.  I had hoped; it just didn’t happen.
• Bon Iver: A friend introduced me to this beautiful band earlier in the semester, and I was so excited to see he was playing The Vic in December.  Then I noticed the date was the same as one of my finals.  Seriously, Wheaton, you are completely interfering with my true purpose in living here!

IN MISCELLANEOUS

These are my honorable mentions, I suppose.  I certainly don’t want to forget:

• Volleyball nights at HHBC & Parkview
• My “Tribute to the Twenties” Finer Things Club invitation … No paper.  No plastic.  No talking about work.
• Henderson’s 20 Something Date Auction & subsequent date … Jamie and I raised over $400 auctioning ourselves off for missions, and we got to see Derek Webb. 
• Thursday night LOST parties with Todd & Jeanna
• My last West Hall Academy Awards Gala
• My last Strangers in the Night … my girls got me a date this year!
• Three weddings in two weeks … Kelsey, Anna and then Dave & Teresa
• Last weekend in OK road trip to Dallas … Jamie and I visited Kelly and got to see Shane Claiborne on the Jesus for President book tour.

Well, that about sums it up.  Until next year, friends …

I resolve …

1. To make significant strides toward long term health and fitness.  I won’t elaborate here because I intend to address this one blog-wise in the next few weeks.
2. To take a sabbatical from television.  Over the past few years I’ve watched less and less TV, although this year being back on a student schedule has allowed for much more mindless consumption, especially in the afternoon hours (think Full House re-runs and Family Feud … yeah, I’m not proud).  I don’t want to be ridiculous about this one, however; I plan to follow the spirit of the resolution rather than the letter, especially when it comes to social occasions.  In fact, I am already exempting Thursday nights because LOST is a million times more fun with fellow addicts … ooh, and The Office.
3. To read more fiction.  This flows naturally out of the aforementioned resolution, as I would like to spend more of my free time (haha … fellow Exegesis students laugh with me now) reading for fun.  I would especially love to go back and re-read the books I “skimmed” in high school and college.  I started “To Kill a Mockingbird” over the break in solidarity with my brother who’s about to read it for school this spring.  I had forgotton how incredible it is, and it’s only reinforced my desire to read more.  My junior year of college I went on a “Greek Retreat Weekend” with my Greek Readings professor and about ten other students.  One night at dinner Dr. Roark asked us the first book we remembered reading and loving.  After several people offered their responses, he said something to the effect of, “You don’t get enough real life without reading fiction.”  More than anything Greek related about that weekend, I remember his oxymoronic statement and have since been amused to discover its truth.
4. To give my best effort toward course work.  My first semester back in school after four years off was a good one, but I definitely know I can do better.  Work was especially hard to balance (and I’m sure will continue to be so), but I think with a semester under my belt I am much better prepared to give my best effort this semester.  This will include:  not missing any classes unless decidedly planned in advance, i.e. because of travel, etc.  (However, I will not skip in order to finish homework for other classes or because I forgot to turn my phone – and thus my alarm – off vibrate, as were the few occasions for skipping this semester), actually being early for every class (five minutes is my goal), getting to know and have a good relationship with each of my professors, and finally (and perhaps most importantly) getting research done AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.
5. To put myself on a path for significant spiritual growth.  I’m actually collapsing several resolutions into one here.  In so many ways the past semester has been the best of times and the worst of times, and honestly my time with the Lord has often been of the worst category.  It’s not just my “quiet time” that I’m concerned for; I have not sought to walk in the Spirit.  I’ve drunk shallowly and thus lived shallowly, but I am beginning again to crave that intimacy and depth.  Ever since my freshman year  when Richard Foster’s “Celebration of Discipline” was assigned reading in my Intro to Minisitry class, I’ve been unable to escape the book’s opening paragraph: “Superficiality is the curse of our age.  The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem.  The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.”  I don’t want to fall into a legalistic agenda rewarded by check marks and gold stars; I want to BE different.  BE transformed.  So tangibly, over the following year I would like to:

• Read the bible through chronologically.  It is ridiculous that I am a graduate student in Biblical studies and have yet to read my object of study in its entirety.  For some reason I get sidetracked after making it all the way to Judges; I get through the hard part and then give up and go back to familiar NT passages.  I have started several reading “plans” beginning in middle school and up to this past spring, but have yet to complete any of them.  So hopefully by trying something new (the chronological approach) and by making my goal public, this will be the year.
• Study, but more importantly actually practice the spiritual disciplines.  I want to experiment with those I have been more hesitant to practice and go deeper in those I have more confidence in.  I want to glean wisdom from those who have practiced them both now and well into the past.  I want to become the deep person Foster argues is so desperately needed.
• Attend Wheaton’s theology conference this spring over Spiritual Formation.
• Go on a personal retreat.  After reading this blog a few months ago, I was reminded of this blog I read awhile back, and the combination of the two stirred up a similar desire within myself.  I don’t know what it will look like or when it will happen, but I’ve also felt the call to “Get thee to a nunnery.”

Alright, so those are my five … well, more like ten crammed into five.  I am a lover of lists, especially lists in blog form, so this was a fun one.  What about you, friends … what are your resolutions this year?